What Day?

Yale Not Jail

As much as I hate to agree with Jesse Jackson, he was right about one thing.  We spend way more money on keeping people in jail than we spend on the schooling that everybody knows makes it a lot less likely that any given kid will end up in prison. 

And here's a tiny peek at just how stoopid we are in that particular regard:

20.2 Million = College Students in USAmerica Inc
$21 Billion = What we spend on College every year (Avg Cost, Public 2- or 4-year schools)

2.2 Million = Prison Inmates 
$74 Billion = What we spend on Prisons in USAmerica Inc every year 

Arithmetic please: We have almost 10 times as many students as we have inmates, but we spend more than 3 times as much on the inmates as we spend on the students.

Why does that make sense to anybody?

Read up at smartasset.com

The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill, and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Combined both companies generated over $2.53 billion in revenue in 2012, and represent more than half of the private prison business. So what exactly makes the business of incarcerating Americans so lucrative?

 

Gitcher Swag On

RedBubble.com

What Jeb Said

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Bless his pea-pickin' little ol' heart - he's trying so hard to lead some of these dolts away from the extremes, while trying so hard to step in the right places thru the minefield, which generally ends up meaning he's trying hard not to lead too much.  And that's pretty much exactly what electoral politics is all about.  You have to calculate; you say things that bring some voters over to your side while not alienating too many others.

I think Jeb is the GOP's only chance to pull that off, and I think Jeb is probably just not really up to the challenge.

He's half right, hoping to parlay it into enough of a message that's acceptable to enough of everybody wearing the Red Badge to stitch together a wobbly little coalition to get close to maybe being in contention for a shot at making a run for what may or may not be his big chance at the nomination - god willin' and the crick don't rise.  

Seriously, I just don't think he's up to it even tho' I think the GOP mover/shakers are working feverishly to prop him up, and I'm still not convinced he won't be the GOP's guy next fall.  Or is it that he'll be the GOP's next fall guy? This is all very confusing.

But anyway - half right.  He just got it kinda upside down and backwards.  He says the controversy over the Confederate Battle Flag isn't about the Confederacy so much as it's about what the flag came to represent in the 20th century.  That's the half-right part.

The upside-down-and-backwards part is that there was a long and concerted effort to change our perception, and to get people to believe that that flag represented Heritage and Commitment and Honor on the part of the glorious warriors who fought under it, instead of maintaining the truth about it, and making sure that it remained the symbol of Greed and Inhumanity and Bigotry and all the things this country has always said it doesn't want to be. It became the rallying point for people who need desperately to be lied into a political catatonia so they can go on pretending they don't have to do anything but wish their troubles away - or to kill their way outa the mess they're forever getting us all into.

But here's the thing, kids - that flag is the flag of quitters and losers and racist assholes. It is, it always was, and it always will be.

A Special Holiday Message

About That Son Of God Thing

I'm not bashing Christmas - I flat-out love me some Christmas, so don't get me wrong, but:

John 3:16 - "For god so loved the world He gave his only begotten son..."

Why "son"?  Why couldn't it have been his only begotten daughter?   If we're talking about an all-powerful, all-purpose, all-in-one Ron Popeil kinda god here, we have to assume "he" could choose.  So why a son?

That right there anchors the Jesus story firmly in the culture and the mindset of the people of the 1st century CE.  There's nothing particularly timeless about it at all - and there's nothing divine about it either.  People were telling a story, and the people of that time placed a far greater value on a boy child than they did on a girl child.  So if they wanna make it a really big deal, then of course, the kid's gotta be a boy.

But, Mike - these were semi-primitive people who didn't understand a lot, so god had to speak to them in ways they could understand and blah blah blah.

Bullshit.  The story says Jesus walked on water.  He fed the multitudes with a few loaves and fishes.  He changed water to wine.  He touched a leper and cured him.  He touched a blind guy and made him see again.  He brought Lazarus back to life after he was fucking dead.  He was called 'rabbi' - teacher.  They said, "Oh Lord, show us the way".  Jesus did all that; Jesus was all that, but somehow a quick lesson on "don't be a mysogynistic dick" - that was just too much?  That's what blows their minds and makes the whole thing unbelievable?

I'm just saying there's something kinda sketchy about the whole Christ Child thing.

But hey - Merry Fuckin' Christmas anyway, knuckleheads. Hope it's a great day for everybody.

Today's Wonderment

Now that the budget deal's been passed and (I think) on its way over to the Oval Office; and since it includes that horrible-est of all horribles (Planned Parenthood funding), isn't it time for the RINO Hunters to be out in force, declaring all Repubs who voted for it instead of shutting down the gubmint to be traitors of the highest blah blah blah?

I mean, we did get some weak-ass blubbering from Frank Graham.

And WingNut Daily kinda put up a list of Repubs who voted for the Omnibus - although it was really just a link to another website where they love to bitch about immigration.  I'll list them out here just in case you're itchin' for a chance to limber up any new torches and pitchforks you've got layin' around:

GOP Senators voting YES
Alexander (R-TN)
Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blunt (R-MO)
Capito (R-WV)
Coats (R-IN)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Gardner (R-CO)
Graham (R-SC)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kirk (R-IL)
Lankford (R-OK)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Perdue (R-GA)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rounds (R-SD)
Tillis (R-NC)
Wicker (R-MS)

House GOP Reps voting YES
Aderholt
Allen
Barr
Barton
Benishek
Bilirakis
Bishop (MI)
Bishop (UT)
Bost
Boustany
Brady (TX)
Brooks (IN)
Buchanan
Bucshon
Burgess
Calvert
Carter (GA)
Carter (TX)
Chabot
Chaffetz
Coffman
Cole
Collins (GA)
Collins (NY)
Comstock
Conaway
Cook
Costello (PA)
Cramer
Crenshaw
Culberson
Curbelo (FL)
Davis, Rodney
Denham
Dent
Diaz-Balart
Dold
Donovan
Duffy
Ellmers (NC)
Fitzpatrick
Fleischmann
Flores
Foxx
Frelinghuysen
Gibson
Granger
Graves (GA)
Graves (MO)
Grothman
Guthrie
Hanna
Harper
Hartzler
Hensarling
Herrera Beutler
Hill
Huizenga (MI)
Hurd (TX)
Issa
Jenkins (WV)
Johnson (OH)
Jolly
Joyce
Katko
Kelly (MS)
King (NY)
Kinzinger (IL)
Kline
Knight
LoBiondo
Loudermilk
Love
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
MacArthur
Marchant
McCarthy
McCaul
McHenry
McMorris Rodgers
McSally
Messer
Mica
Miller (MI)
Moolenaar
Mullin
Murphy (PA)
Neugebauer
Newhouse
Noem
Nugent
Nunes
Olson
Palazzo
Paulsen
Pearce
Pittenger
Pitts
Poe (TX)
Poliquin
Price, Tom
Reed
Reichert
Renacci
Ribble
Rigell
Rogers (KY)
Rokita
Rooney (FL)
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Ross
Rouzer
Royce
Russell
Ryan (WI)
Scalise
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shimkus
Simpson
Smith (NJ)
Stefanik
Stewart
Stivers
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiberi
Trott
Turner
Upton
Valadao
Wagner
Walberg
Walden
Walorski
Walters, Mimi
Weber (TX)
Wenstrup
Westmoreland
Wilson (SC)
Womack
Woodall
Yoder
Young (AK)
Zeldin
Zinke

C'mon, guys - where's that fiery passion?   The people on those lists voted to bankrupt us, and to allow the Muslim Hordes to cross the borders and nefariously manipulate your virginal teenagers into killing all your grand-babies - they voted with Nancy Pelosi.  Cowards!  Where's that red-faced hysterical zeal we've come to know and love?

Some of the usual wild-eyed, jungle-thrashing frenzy may have been up for a while, but there's practically no sign of it anywhere on the intertoobz where I normally expect to find it.  Curious, eh?

Well, as always, we can find a certain explanation in the fact that Congress Critters have to look for the "Safe Votes".

If they're in a district where the likelihood of losing a primary challenge is very low (the Eric Cantor ambush notwithstanding), then voting for it is relatively 'safe' because even though some base voters will rebel, it won't be enough to make it a problem.

Those in districts that are of a more Purplish hue need to be safe in a slightly different way.  ie: They know they're in a closely divided district, and nobody on the other side is going to vote for them, so in order to shore up their constituent support at home and get their voters to turn out, they have to get permission from their leadership to vote against whatever the party caucus wants, while still being sure the bill either passes or fails according to their leadership's preference.  That way, they can say they've made a principled stand, and since the vote in congress went the way their opposition wanted it to go, the other side won't get all hot and bothered. Safe.

So this is fun, ain't it?  My oldest boy just came over and asked what I was working on, and when I explained it all, he rolled his eyes and said, "Fuckin' politics, man".  And this kid is no dummy - he was raised with this shit; he's curious about it, and he makes an honest effort to understand it.  No wonder so many of us just blow it off.

Anyway, one last thing - I'm thinking maybe the GOP is letting the Dumpster Fire that is the Donald Trump "campaign" blaze away because it gives them some cover by keeping the rubes in one place and busy, so the Repubs in congress can get a few things accomplished. 

They are not totally oblivious to their poll numbers - they know the McConnell Plan is a straight-up loser for 'em now, and they know they might be about to end up on the wrong end of a political disaster that makes Jonestown look like a potluck dinner with the Methodists on an average Wednesday.

Oh yeah - can you guess what else passed this session, Repubs?

H.R. 2820: Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Reauthorization Act of 2015
House Vote #695
Dec 16, 2015 10:30 a.m.
Passed 421/0
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and concur in the Senate Amendment in the House

Stem cells!?!  Planned Parenthood and cutting up harvested dead babies to sell on the open market?  Aaaaaaarrgh - oh the humanity.  No wait - selling things on the open market?  We're in favor of that Unfettered Capitalism thing, right?  Fuckin' politics, man.

It is a wonderment.

Happy Whatever Doesn't Offend You

... or does... or something else entirely.  We do get to choose.

The world starts to die every year at the beginning of Summer, and the world starts to come back to life every year at the end of Autumn. Just get past the bottom and you're on your way back up again.

A Solstice Noise

Tonight, 11:49 Eastern Time 

Yeah, it's old and it's all chestnutty and everything.  Don't care.  Haven't heard the whole thing in quite a while, and some of this stuff is just too heartbreaking not to listen closely and let it slam dead center into my guts on a dayless night as we pass the bottom one more time and one more time and one more. 

It's all we need is just one more time past the bottom.

December --George Winston

>

Christmas Pics

(click the pic to embiggen)

Today's Facebook Looney

You're afraid of that world?

Isn't 'participation' kind of an important concept in a little thing we like to call 'democratic self-government'?

And not to get too Capt Obvious on y'all, but ain't nobody don't know about the Law Of Unintended Consequences - the first lesson (sometimes the only lesson) a spanking teaches a kid is that violence is an appropriate reaction when you're mad or disappointed or frustrated or whatever.

So, you're telling me you're afraid of what happens when we teach kids to participate in the world they live in, and you're afraid they won't react violently when people don't behave the way they want them to behave. Is that about it? Is that really it?

Dontcha hafta wonder why it seems like somebody may be setting you up for something?

Today's National Shame

USAmerica Inc came into the world with some pretty serious baggage - the most prominent of which we've started to address in pretty good shape. We've fixed the mechanical parts of the astounding shittiness of slavery, and of not letting women vote. So two-outa-three ain't bad, but we gotta get right with the guns or we're headed back to the bad old days - and I'm talking about the bad old days before 1790.

Quartz:

America’s gun problem can’t be distilled down to one single issue, of course, but it’s clear that on top of crime and fears of terrorism and insufficient mental health resources and the Second Amendment, America’s gun problem has something to do with America’s masculinity problem.

--and--

As Alankaar Sharma, a social worker and researcher, tells Quartz, “Possessing a gun is considered by many men, if not most, as a straightforward way of subscribing to dominant masculinity.” In his view, the patriarchal system, which privileges a certain set of masculine behaviors, values, and practices, provides men with “a clear and justifiable reason to own guns.” It cements their identity as masculine men.

And for many men today, it’s an identity in particular need of cementing. In this May 2015 op-ed for The Los Angeles Times, sociologist Jennifer Carlson argues that men are clinging to guns as a way to address a broad range of social insecurities. Author of a book on the social practice of gun-carrying in America, Carlson found that gun owners often characterized their fathers’ generation as an era when men had important roles to play as providers and breadwinners.

But men’s participation in the labor force has been declining since the 1970s. As The Economist’s cover story, “The Weaker Sex,” explained earlier in 2015, poorly educated men in rich societies aren’t coping well in the 21st century. Changes in the home and the labor force, especially the loss of manufacturing jobs, have created a class of disgruntled, financially insecure men. Meanwhile, women, who now earn more university degrees than men, are surging into the workforce.

So it isn't simple; it doesn't fit neatly on a bumper sticker; it takes guts and honesty and some real intellectual horsepower to figure out what we can do, but we'll hafta start by insisting the drama pimps like Wayne LaPierre just shut the fuck up long enough to give the adults a chance to think this through.

In the meantime, we can brainstorm on that bumpersticker.

USAmerica Inc

It's about dicks and chicks, dummy

And here's an encore from Jim Jeffries:

Part 1

Part 2

Saturday Pix

Today's Podcast Winner

Been jonesin' on this all day.

driftglass and Blue Gal

"You're isolating yourself from the whole "Spelunking In A Port-a-Potty Experience".



The Brewing of the Soma --John Greenleaf Whittier

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
'Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap,' the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.

And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
'Behold the drink of gods!'

They drank, and to! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began;
The gray of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,
The cripple leaped and ran.

'Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
Forget your long annoy.'
So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness went,
A storm of drunken joy.

Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged and glorious birth,
Soared upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,
And, sobered, sank to earth.

The land with Soma's praises rang;
On Gihon's banks of shade
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang
All men to Soma prayed.

The morning twilight of the race
Sends down these matin psalms;
And still with wondering eyes we trace
The simple prayers to Soma's grace,
That Vedic verse embalms.

As in that child-world's early year,
Each after age has striven
By music, incense, vigils drear,
And trance, to bring the skies more near,
Or lift men up to heaven!

Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The scourger's keen delight of pain,
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,
The wild-haired Bacchant's yell,--

The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk
The saner brute below;
The naked Santon, hashish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,
The fakir's torture-show!

And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfil;
In sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane
The heathen Soma still!

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm! 

Fucking brilliant is all that is.

While There's Still Time

I heard Lil Donny say "bullshit" on the air today, and I just needed to get this up before the polls and the Rube-On-The-Street feedback floated to the top of the cess pool.

How much will this increase Trump's lead over those other malignant puffballs?

Just wondering.

And Now We Go A-Caroling

The Price of Things

Way back when Star Wars first became the biggest thing ever, we wondered how it blew up so big so fast.  I mean, how do you make half a billion dollars in a coupla months in 1977 selling movie tickets at $2.75 a piece, and action figures and masks and posters and bed sheets and various other low-end shit like that?

Wanna make the large dollars?  Develop the cross marketing tie-ins with the guys with the really deep pockets - the health insurance companies, the docs, and their buddies in the medical supplies industry.

Just kidding, ya weenies (it had me goin' for a while tho).  These are from a master joker extraordinaire named Richard Littler who blogs deliciously viciously at scarfolk.blogspot.com

The Internal Conflict

I grew up in a family that just never had enough money for the cool shit.  We never went hungry; and we were never in any danger (that I can recall) of losing the house or even the crappy little cars that my dad could afford.  I had the stuff I needed, but there was always something I wanted that was just a little out of reach - usually clothes.

I felt a little deprived I guess, but every now and then, something floats by on the inter-toobz to remind me that missing some things - especially missing out on certain fashionably fashionable fashion trends - is going to turn out to be a really good thing later on.

Like this:

I knew guys who wore that kinda shit - to work; not just to those abysmal disco joints on the weekends.  And while I can say honestly I laughed my ass off back then, I also have to be honest enough now to say that I'm really glad I didn't have the bucks to look and act just like them, cuz I can't be sure I wouldn't have done exactly that.

Peer pressure works in mysterious ways.  

And it's gonna get you too, little hipster dudes.  Just you wait and see.

Hey, Facebookers

Remember when we weren't all so fuckin' stoopid we couldn't recognize a hoax when we saw one?

Click like if you remember. 

Oops.  So, OK - we've been falling for this shit for a long time.  But hey - click Share if you agree we could be just a tad more diligent about keeping our heads out of our asses.